


Formative

by Shoi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shoi/pseuds/Shoi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean picks up his first cigarette when he's sixteen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Formative

**Author's Note:**

> wow i wrote this in 2006 it's seven years old. :|
> 
> pre-series, gen. dean, his bad habits, and his brother.

Dean picks up his first cigarette when he's sixteen. He picks up a lot of things that year, actually. A good leather jacket, not too scuffed, paid in cash from a Goodwill in North Dakota. A tendency to balance his weight more forward on the balls of his feet, thanks to judo training. A knack for bow guns. It's a year of writing band names on his knuckles in permanent black marker, a year of being awkward and a little too tall and a little too skinny and of figuring out maybe bangs aren't working out so well for him. There's a girl, too, at a very temporary public school, with small breasts and a lot of heavy black eye makeup and black spiked bracelets on both wrists. Her name is Elise, and really that's the end of virginity for Dean right there.

It's she who hands him his first cigarette, after a particularly clumsy session of pawing at one another, the two of them afterwards sort of half touching under the blanket on the mattress in her parent's basement. His jeans are in the same nebulous and unknown location as her panties, her shirt hiked up over her breasts, black velvet choker a dark stripe across her skin. There's some inane Seattle grunge band droning in the background and Dean kind of wants to shut it off or make some jackass comment about the quality of popular music these days, but Elise moves and her shoulder brushes his and he's immediately distracted into watching her instead, the music forgotten.

She rolls over and fumbles in her purse for a pack. Dean watches as she puts the cigarette between her lips, the motions fascinating and as sultry a thing as he's ever seen in his life. She lights it and takes a puff and leaves her dark lipstick ring around it, and then she hands it to him without a word. Dean eyes it, and thinks of his father and his insistence on good health contrasted by too much drinking, and he takes the cigarette and inhales so hard he promptly chokes, and she laughs at his involuntary flail.

"Never done this before, huh," she says, grinning in a way that makes her nose wrinkle up a little. "It's cool. I started when I was twelve so I've had practice."

Dean says, "Well I've been kind of busy," and cuts himself off with a small squawk as her foot slides up the inside of his leg, toes prodding at his boxers.

"You just gotta chill, okay," she says, and she drapes her leg over him and smiles terribly.

Dean says, voice nearly a squeak, "I think I'm _moving_ in a week!" which is a ridiculous thing to say when there's a _girl_ crawling all over you, but she doesn't much seem to care and after a little while neither does he.

Dean gets home late, and it's only Sam waiting for him, sitting at the kitchen table with an open book, a spiral bound notebook and a worried expression. "Where were you!" he exclaims when Dean closes the door and locks chain and deadbolt at the same time. He's on his feet and halfway over when he smells the stink of smoke, and he stops, frowning.

Dean gives him a "what of it" look, and Sam's frown turns into a scowl. "Dad'll kill you," he says. He's standing in Dean's way and Dean thinks about just how sick he is of dealing with his brother at every second of every day. "For what, Sammy," he says, and elbows Sam aside ungently. He heads for the fridge and retrieves a coke. "He's not here," he intones, adding a mental, _again_ , "He doesn't know shit, and neither do you."

"You've been smoking," Sam says, a little small voiced, cowed because his brother is bigger and older and stronger and obviously a lot more experienced. "It's not good for you." Sam is twelve and at that age when teachers are starting their lectures about the evils of narcotics and the necessity of telling on your peers when they so much as put a toe over the line of all that's Good and Right. Sam loves teachers, trusts them to do right by him. Dean's at a point where he's pretty sure he can't have the "just because I didn't show my work doesn't mean my answers on the math test weren't right" argument ever again without wanting to make someone eat chalk.

"Shut up, Sammy," Dean grouses through his teeth, thinking, this is the litany of my life. Shut up Sammy, shut up Sammy, shut up, shut up. "Get off my case, you're not Dad and I'm not taking any crap from you." He looks at his brother, the small round face with its expression of disbelief and mounting anger; Sam's never been a boy to take being dismissed very well, especially not if it's Dean, whose weak spots he already knows no matter how quickly and efficiently Dean works to patch them over. It's nothing short of infuriating.

Sam says, "I could tell-" and then he has to make a break for it because Dean is _after_ him like a shot, chasing him clear into the tiny living room with a flying leap over the sofa. The tussle that ensues ends with Sam smashed into the ratty old sofa cushions, begging to be let up, yelling about being terrorized and trying mightily to escape the hammerlock he's being crushed into currently.

"You tell on me," Dean hisses at him fiercely, twisting his arm enough to make him yelp, "And I really will kill you."

Sam glares at him with wounded betrayed eyes for the rest of the week, and it's only when John returns and instructs them to help break down their meager belongings and pack up the car that they start talking again. They walk down to the corner store one last time, and Dean buys Sam one of those books he's been eyeing at the used bookstore, and Dean smokes all the way there and Sam doesn't say a word about it.

Dean hasn't left a forwarding address or a number for Elise. He finds that he doesn't care all that much, in the end, and he's pretty sure she doesn't either. He doesn't much think of her after that.

***

Later Dean wonders if maybe he's been giving Sam more shit than the kid deserves. Sam's learned the ropes of the job well enough; he's good with a gun and quick with a knife and he knows his Latin backwards and forwards, sacred chants all neatly memorized alongside the knowledge of what kills what and how quickly. They do team ups sometimes, tiny jobs, quick little cases that don't take much brains or violence. A wayward kappa in a city park, sated with a few cucumbers and an obscure ward. The tiny sad spirit of a young girl, haunting the mall bathroom where she'd been dumped ten years before. Little things that don't seem to chew at the soul nearly as much as whatever John's usually handling.

Sam doesn't bow under any of it-- of course he doesn't, Dean thinks, he's a Winchester after all and Winchester boys don't much bow-- but it's possible, Dean thinks, it's possible he's bending. Sam's not quiet but there's something about him changing, something that Dean can't fully put a finger on. It bothers him, and so he bothers Sam, and smokes more, up to a full pack a day now. The expense is eating a hole in the funds he pulls from sharking and pool, but he doesn't much care, because his fingers itch when they're not doing _something_ and familiar motions when his surroundings never stay the same are some measure of comfort. In his more self-reflective moments Dean thinks at least smoking is something only he does, something his father would disapprove of if he knew and something Sam doesn't much mention but obviously hates.

Dean takes his GED a few weeks after his eighteenth birthday, because he's got no time for high school now that "work" is piling up. The math portion is as easy as breathing for him and he doesn't wonder about that or think it's anything overly special. Numbers make sense because they don't change, and you can go the long way around them to get the same answer every time and really Dean kind of thinks that anybody who hasn't figured that out is an idiot. The rest of the test is no sweat and when the results come back with the necessary certificates and papers, John takes him out to the parking lot behind their shitty run down apartment complex and clasps the keys to the Impala into Dean's palm.

"Your mother picked her out the year we were married," John mumbles, almost a little hesitant like he's not sure he should be talking about Mary or not, and Dean frowns a little and tries to reconcile the image he has of a perfect and obviously saintly woman with a tough black muscle car. John seems to read his expression for the confusion it is, though, because he smiles his tired smile and adds a little mysteriously, "You know, _she's_ the one liked Zeppelin so much."

He leaves Dean with the car and Dean sits in the driver's seat with the door open and the engine off, watching the stars come out above the humming power lines and chewing on an unlit cigarette.

When the passenger side door opens Dean glances over, and Sam looks at him for a moment and then slides in to huddle on the seat, hugging his knees and looking small despite the fact he's growing more and more every year, the top of his head level with Dean's chin at least and still with a ways to go.

"Hey," he says, hooking his fingers around his sneaker tips.

Dean looks at him. "Hey," he replies after a moment, and Sam's posture is so defeated he adds, "All right over there?"

"Yeah," says Sam, in that wistful sighing way that means he's lying and doesn't care who knows it. Dean leans back, draping an arm over the seat, and says, "You're full of it."

Sam works his jaw a little and doesn't reply at first but finally he says, "I haven't been sleeping real well."

Dean closes his eyes. "So go to bed earlier."

"It doesn't work." Sam sounds miserable now, and exhausted. "I just-"

"You study too much." Dean informs him without feeling. "Party more, work less, you'll be passing out in no time."

"It's not that. I have bad dreams."

"Everybody does."

"You don't." Sam's tone is very faintly accusing and Dean opens his eyes and looks up at the Impala's roof, pressing his tongue against the cigarette's filter. He thinks about his dreams of rooms filled with blood and being unable to move his own body and of strange voices that laugh in his ears and know far too much of his heart. He thinks about being five or six, and it being three AM and sharing a bed with a sniffling, upset toddler. He thinks about being ten and Sam, still so small and uncertain and pleading with him for help in fighting the demons that are obviously living under his bed.

He thinks about giving Sam the only weapon he has for himself. He takes the cigarette out of his mouth.

" _The Queen of light, she took her bow,_ " he sings quietly, without lifting his head, without any warning at all, " _and then she turned to go. The prince of peace embraced the gloom, and walked the night alone..._ " And he can feel Sam watching him as he sings, remembering this particular song from a very long time ago, never meant as a lullaby but used as one anyway, years ago when they were closer and safer and still spoke each others' languages.

" _Oh, dance in the dark of night... sing to the morning light._ "

Sam's body unwinds as the words reflect on them both.

" _Bring it back,_ " Dean murmurs in conclusion, nearly under breath, his eyes closed again in some expression of serenity. " _Bring it back, bring it back._ "

When he falls silent Sam is quiet, too. Dean knows he's not sleeping by the pattern of his breathing, a little harsh and a little hitching, and Dean does him the favor of not watching him cry. It's that strange and familiar feeling of teenage despair, like nothing is ever going to fucking get better, and on top of that there are the monsters and they are all too real, and Dean knows that Sam's obsessing over his SATs and his future and the fact that their father's mission just isn't his top priority.

Sam says, voice brave and carefully unwavering, "I don't fucking know where to go from here, Dean. I just don't."

Dean puts the cigarette back into his mouth and he leans over and puts his hand on top of Sam's head, and says nothing, because fuck if he knows either.

***

The road is still wet from the rain, but the moon is out now, and the fall night is crisp and clear. Sam is hauling his bags out of the car's backseat, a few things stuffed into trash bags in haste and his hair still overly mussed with rush. When he turns his head, Dean catches a glimpse of the darkening bruise along the curve of his eye socket, and his mouth is tight.

Dean doesn't make any efforts to help him with the bags. He leans against the passenger side door of the Impala, one arm dangling loose at his side, the other still holding the cigarette to his lips; the smoke burns a little at his lungs already and he feels a cough building up in the back of his throat, which he suppresses. Sam looks like he's going to jump out of his skin if there's noise above a whisper. Behind him on the steps of the dorm a gaggle of upperclassmen are gawking at Dean's car. One of them raises his voice in a drunken whoop, "Nice wheels, man!" Dean lifts his chin in bored acknowledgement; he's not interested in a discussion about cars right now. His eyes flick back to Sam, who's frozen, wide eyed and looking down at his ratty old duffle bag, shoulders tightly pressed as though the eyes of the other students are tangible forces against his back.

Dean says, real low, "Sam." It's just the name but Sam looks up and sideways at him, and his mouth opens, and it's a moment of such vulnerability Dean is nearly stirred to movement. Sam's only eighteen and Dean remembers that age and he's pretty sure he wasn't that damn young.

Dean doesn't move, because that's not what Dean does. He puffs smoke and says, "Ease down. Nobody's gonna bite you."

"I'm fucking fine," growls Sam, eyes narrowing, ready to lock on the nearest blood related target and make an enemy out of them, too. "So if you're going to-"

"I'm not gonna do anything," Dean says easily, without so much as lifting a hand. He works the cigarette a little, letting it droop to one corner of his mouth as he talks. "Nothing except stand here and watch you get in there and then I'm going to get back in my car and I'm gonna go take my shit from Dad for bringing you up here in the first place. Let me tell you," he adds, quirking his eyebrows together momentarily, "How lucky you are, how very damn lucky we had that fucking four week hot-spot deal in Vegas. Otherwise there'd be no way to make it here in time. There's a lot of happy circumstance going into this, Sammy, not least of which is me in a good mood, so I'd say it's in your best interests I stay that way." He's not as mad as he sounds, but he wants Sam to understand what all this means, the magnitude of it, what Dean feels like he's losing.

"He hit me," is all Sam says, after a moment's silence, his fingers curling into the material of his duffle bag. He sounds a little stunned, and Dean doesn't blame him; John Winchester is a lot of things but he's never once raised hand to his boys.

"You pissed him off," Dean says, as though this excuses it, though even he doesn't think it does. "And God knows he might just haul off and clobber me too when I get back, so don't go 'round thinking it's just 'cause you're _special_ , Sammy." He accentuates this statement with a tiny grin, trying to lighten things, because the taste of endings and anger lies heavy on his tongue. Sam looks at him for a long moment, and then he lifts the last bag over his shoulder and straightens up, and Dean has one of those weird moments where he expects Sam to be smaller and he isn't. He _remembers_ Sam smaller, and it takes a second for the images to line up.

"Well," Sam says, bitter and wounded, "You can give him my regards anyway. For whatever they're fucking worth."

Dean doesn't say anything to that, because there's no point. Sam's venting, and if Dean won't fight him Dean's obviously going to have to listen instead.

"You'd think he'd be happy for me," Sam went on, turning around and looking up at the dorm with narrowed eyes. "You'd think he's give a shit that _one_ of his sons is going to-" He stops abruptly and looks at Dean, aware of what he was about to say and how it was going to sound. Dean looks back at him dully, indifferent by now to this conversation and the accusations of not wanting to make something of himself, and entirely uninterested in having the same old fight over again. It's a barb so old and automatic it doesn't even really hurt anymore.

"...Sorry, that's not what I meant," Sam mutters after a moment, and he looks like he wants to say more that's apologetic and possibly grateful and Dean's going to put a stop to _that_.

He straightens up off the car and reaches into his back pocket.

"Shut up and come here."

Sam blinks, and moves forward cautiously, like he's worried Dean's going to punch him or Dean's going to hug him and he can't decide which would be worse. Dean just pulls the paper out of his pocket and slaps it into Sam's free hand.

"That's your PO Box," he says. "You can pick up the key from the nice lady at the post office with the saggy tits. Check it at least once a week." He grasps Sam's hand to get his attention good, and Sam looks up, finally meeting his eyes. Dean plucks the cigarette from his mouth with his other hand, and he licks the taste of nicotine off his lips before he goes on. "I mean it, you don't skip on this. It's important."

"Why?" says Sam, eyebrows furrowing together in confusion. "What's the big deal? Dean, if it's got something to do with hunting, I don't want..." he trails off at the look on his brother's face and draws back, holding his hands in the air. "Fine. Fine, I will. Whatever you say."

"Thank you," Dean drawls, and flicks the ash off his cigarette. "Now get going. Keggers to go to, football games to attend. Sorority girls to bone." Sam snorts, and Dean grins, though it feels like more of a grimace. "And gimme a call if you need something," he adds. "Can't say I'll be able to deliver, but I'll sure consider it real hard."

"Oh thanks," Sam says, and for the first time tonight he smiles. It's a strange little look, sort of hopeful and sort of terrified, and Dean vaguely remembers that much smaller Sam and a much smaller world, of hotel rooms and half-assed apartments.

He puts the cigarette back between his lips and ambles around the front of the car back to the driver's side, leaving Sam standing on the grass with all his bags and the belongings he felt he could carry off. Dean opens the door and leans over the car top for a moment.

"Hey. You, uh." He lifts an eyebrow. "You equipped for emergencies? Of the, you know. The usual kind."

Sam sighs. "Do I look like an idiot, Dean?"

Dean grins a bit. "Sometimes, yeah. Just asking." He slides into the driver's seat and shuts the door behind him. The windows are up so there's no chance of either of them saying goodbye; Sam stands there, weighted down by bags and after a moment he gives that little smile again and gathers up his things and starts hobbling towards the dorm. One of the drunk guys on the stoop hops up almost immediately to give him a hand, and Dean, aware Sam's going to be as okay as he ever is, puts the car into drive and pulls away from the curb.

He figures he's going to get quite the phone call later this week, when Sam's curiosity gets the better of him and he finds the couple thousand bucks cash Dean's stashed in that PO Box. Not by any miracle of grand theft; he'd had a high stakes poker game or two in the past few weeks that had served him well enough, and Dean's pretty sure the money won't go to waste.

Dean thinks about Sam at college and going to class every day, carting books back and forth in an effort to become a _lawyer_ of all things; he thinks about Sam and his current lack of guns, good blades, special ammo, and certainty. He thinks about himself for the first time in a while, too, what he's going to do when he gets home and John's still angry and still has two or three cases lined up that need attention now now now. He thinks he's probably going to apologize but justify the actions-- better Sam go off under someone's supervision, rather than hitchhiking all the way out to California-- and then he's going to get his salt and his guns and he's going to go where he's told and do what he's been raised to do best, and he's damn well going to be grateful for what he's got. What he's still got.

Dean puts the cigarette back between his lips and takes a long, lung-decaying drag, and then he rolls down the window and flicks it out, leaving it to spark off the pavement somewhere behind him.

After a moment, the rest of the pack follows it.


End file.
